


The quality of mercy

by basilique



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Remembers, But the primary ship is Stucky, Empathy, Escape, Everyone has intense feelings and no one has hair, I kindof ship everyone with everyone in this fic, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Love Triangles, M/M, Or more like a love pentagon, POV Multiple, Pain, Protective Natasha Romanov, Protective Steve Rogers, Rescue, Sam Wilson Feels, So that Bucky won't feel it, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve absorbs the pain of Bucky's torture, Stucky - Freeform, Torture, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-26 02:55:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10778031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basilique/pseuds/basilique
Summary: It was a good idea; strategically, for SHIELD; ethically, for Tony; and practically, for keeping Steve from losing his mind with worry about his darling old war buddy.But Tony hadn't banked on Steve reacting like this, on his insisting that he be the one, and the only one, to absorb the Winter Soldier's pain.





	1. Chapter 1

"Let's get started," Steve says. 

He sits down in the lab chair, and looks expectantly up at Tony. 

Tony blinks. His hands are full of wires, and he is only about 40% into his explanation of the system. He raises his eyebrows. Either his technical jargon has baffled the old man into masochistic levels of boredom, or the bastard is even more fucking noble than he's cracked up to be. 

"Cap, it's...it's gonna hurt. You sure you don't want to know how it works?" 

"It doesn't matter. Long as it does work." 

Steve's blue eyes look a little crazed. It's almost like he _wants_ the pain that Tony has been describing. 

Tony sighs. "Alright. Jarvis, shave him." 

A curving metal cable slides out of the back of the chair apparatus where Steve sits. A razor slides over the top of his head, delicate on his scalp. In its wake, Tony fastens the color-coded wires, with their suction seals, to Steve's head. 

They'll have to take a break in a few hours to re-shave Steve's fast-growing hair. 

This thought gives Tony a little hope. Maybe at that point, after Steve has realized what he's going to feel, Tony will be able to persuade Steve to share this burden. It's not right for him to try to take it on all by himself. Hell, Tony himself would be willing to take a shift, to give that poor bastard the Winter Soldier a break from his torment. 

Tony had managed to hack into the electrical system that connected to the Winter Soldier's electric chair in its secluded HYDRA base. From there, he could track the electrical pulses that were being sent through the Winter Soldier's nerves, and extract them before they reached the pain centers in his brain. 

Those electrical signals of pain could be transmitted into another body, one seated in the electric chair that he had constructed in Stark Tower, and wired up at the head. 

It had been a difficult project, but one that he relished, because it was a rescue mission as much as it was a puzzle. If they could redirect the pain of HYDRA's torture out of the Winter Soldier's body, then HYDRA would not be able to condition him. With time, he might be able to regain enough strength of body and mind to escape. 

It was a good idea; strategically, for SHIELD; ethically, for Tony; and practically, for keeping Steve from losing his mind with worry about his darling old war buddy. 

But Tony hadn't banked on Steve reacting like this, on his insisting that he be the one, and the only one, to absorb the Winter Soldier's pain. 

Tony knew Steve, though. And he knew that there was no point in trying to change his mind now. 

Steve was already in the chair, already wired up, his jaw locked and his hands clenching the arm wrests in grim, eager anticipation of the pain. 

Tony sighed again. He hated to do this. Truth was, he hated seeing Cap get so much as a scratch. 

But he'd made his bed, and now he had to lie in it. So he adjusted a dial on a panel beside the electric chair, careful as he altered the route of the nerve synapses within the Winter Soldier's body; out through the Soldier's fingertips, back into his own chair, back through the wires... 

"Sure you don't want anything before we take off, Cap? Snack? Bathroom break?" 

It was a last ditch effort to get Steve out of the chair and they both knew it. 

"Do it, Tony," Steve said, his voice even. 

So Tony flipped a switch, and felt a little crackle under his fingertips as a current of electricity-- of human pain-- waved through the router in his panel and flowed, slow and dull and brutal, into Steve's nervous system. 

Steve tensed as it started, and clenched his teeth and screwed his eyes shut as it grew. The veins in his arms, his hands, his neck, his forehead, bulged horribly. And Tony nearly shut the current off immediately. 

But then he thought of the man on the other side; the poor, wrecked, abused young man who would suddenly be feeling the indescribable bliss of the absense of suffering. 

The Winter Soldier would feel no pain, as though he were just an ordinary man sitting in an ordinary chair. 

And Tony knew that it was this thought that sustained Steve too, as Steve gasped for air and bent forward in the chair, hunched over himself like a creature with a wound to its belly. 

"Tony," Steve gasps, and Tony instantly sinks to his knees beside him. 

"I'm here, Steve. I gotcha." 

"Tony, he's hungry. They're _starving_ him." Furious, hot tears are welling up in Steve's clenched eyes. "They're--ah!" 

Tony reaches out to grasp Steve's hand as he spasms in pain that seems to come from his chest and spread out through his whole body. 

" _God--!_ " Steve lets out a cry that makes Tony feel physically ill. 

"I can stop it, Steve. Let me just give you a break. Just for a second." 

" _No!_ " Steve's answer is fast and ferocious. "No, Tony, don't. _Please."_

Irrepresible sounds of pain and anguish tear their way out of Steve's throat, and water slides out of his eyes, down his burning cheeks. 

" _Bucky_ ", he chokes. " _Bucky..._ " 


	2. Chapter 2

Natasha isn't handling this very well. 

She is pacing back and forth in Tony's lab, her face drawn with stress. 

"Let me take over," she says to Steve, for about the 45th time. 

"No," he says, once again. 

Tony, exhausted, is not doing any better. He is sitting on his desk, surrounded by his gadgets. His chin is in his hands and he looks a bit gray. 

Sam, seated in a fold-out chair that he has pulled up beside Steve, is the only one with any presence of mind left, apparently. He was the one who managed to talk Steve into letting them remove the wires on his head-- albeit only one at a time-- and shave underneath them so that his growing hair would not interfere with the transmission of the Winter Soldier's pain. And he was the one who was currently talking Steve into drinking some nutrient-spiked water, and lifting a straw to his lips. 

"Thanks," Steve says softly, and swallows three gulps with effort. 

It has been seven hours now, since Steve first plugged into the machine. They have all already done their damnedest to try and convince him to rest. But Sam knows Steve. And he knows that the only way they are going to get him off of those wires is to trick him or knock him out. 

Reading the room, Sam can see that Natasha is getting close to trying to choke Steve out so that she can take his place, and Tony is about an hour away from snapping, suiting up, and smashing the whole machine to pieces with an iron fist. 

But Steve's resolve is showing no signs of cracking, so Sam is just going to do his best with the situation at hand. 

"Okay, one more drink, Steve?" he coaxes. He raises the straw hopefully, and Steve bows his head, and drinks. 

"Good job, buddy." Sam gives Steve's hand a squeeze. "What are you feeling now?" 

"His chest," Steve says, his voice tense, small, and exhausted. "They're not hurting him right now, but they're... running an electric current through his chest. Making his arms weak. I can't...I can't lift my arms." 

Natasha suddenly stops pacing and looks around at him sharply. "Can you feel the current in your spine?" 

"No," Steve says, but a moment later, he struggles to raise his face to her, and nods. "Yeah. I can't...feel my legs either. What does it mean?" 

Natasha's face seems to melt with relief. "I think it means they're finished with him. They're making him immobile, so they can take him out of the chair and transport him for the night. It's a common tactic." 

The two of them exchange a look of pure, blissful joy. And then Steve slumps, as the muscles in his neck and shoulders lose their strength. 

A few minutes later, when the lack of pain and the numbness in his body has made Steve confident that the Winter Soldier has been taken out of the chair and locked up or frozen for the night, he finally lets Tony disconnect him from the machine. 

Tony pops the wires off of his scalp and tosses them away rather savagely, and Steve flops forward heavily, onto Sam. 

"Whoa!" Sam catches him, and holds him up in something almost like an embrace. 

Tony and Natasha hurry forward to help, and the three of them get Steve down to the floor, lying flat on his back. They crouch around him to check his heart rate, his breathing, his reflexes. 

"How do you feel, Steve?" Sam asks again. 

"Good." Steve forces his eyes open. Exhaustion and numbness are clearly making them heavy. But he looks lucidly at the three of them for a moment. "They can't hurt him anymore." Then he falls asleep, or passes out, and Sam looks up at Tony grimly. 

"You had to tell him about your new toy, Stark. You couldn't have just kept it to yourself." 

"Don't rub it in, bird." Tony raises his fists to his weary eyes, and rubs them. "I'm already ruing the day I first put two wires together." 

"Well, I'm not," Natasha says, surprising them both. "I want you to hook me up to it, Tony." 

"Oh, for crying out-- not you too, Nat. Please. Just. Get your masochistic thrills somewhere else and leave me out--" 

"We don't know what time in the morning they'll start on him again," Natasha says, ignoring Tony's sarcasm. "And if our objective is to help James break his programming and escape, we need to intercept as much of his pain as possible. Hook me up to the machine, and I'll sleep in here. I'll yell for you when it starts." 

Tony gritted his teeth, but there was no arguing with her logic. 

"Fine," he said after a moment. "But we're switching out after a few hours. You're not marathoning it like Cap just did. We're gonna do it safely, in moderation. Deal?" 

"Deal," she says. 

As Tony shaves her head, by hand this time, tenderly, as though she is a beloved sister that he is sending into a dangerous surgery, Sam sits and watches, by Steve's side on the floor. 

Natasha does not look afraid. She's familiar with pain, Sam knows, and she accepts it as an inevitable part of living. And Sam remembers something, as he looks at her calm, unreadable face. 

_She once loved the Winter Soldier._ She might love him still. It was impossible to tell, with Nat. 

And Sam feels a complex rush of emotions that he can't quite articulate, despite his two degrees in psychology. 

This Winter Soldier must once have been a very good man. _What would it be like, to be loved as he was? To see that someone was willing to channel all of your pain into their own nerves? To know that the very idea of your suffering was worse to them than real, physical suffering in their own body? What in the world could be a stranger experience in this life, than being loved like that?_


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings:
> 
> References to vomiting (while sick with a virus)
> 
> Reference to antisemitism, HYDRA using Bucky for the Winter Soldier experiment because he was Jewish. 
> 
> Take care!!

_High fevers, nausea, no strength to hold up his head._ Steve remembers the viruses that used to wrack his frail body as a child. 

He had leaned against his mother, who would sit beside him on the bed. She would bring him a bowl to vomit into, clean it out again and again, help him sit up and lie down as he needed to, wipe his face with a cool, wet washcloth, speak softly and lovingly to him. 

In the moments before vomiting, when a sickly heat swelled up inside him, and everything felt perverse and wretched in his body, he had sometimes thought that he simply wasn't strong enough to stand it. 

His mother knew what he was feeling. And she had told him once, as he shivered and cried with fever and misery, that she wished she could take his suffering, and _feel it for him_. 

He remembers that long, feverish night, and those sweet words, now, as Bucky's nausea, fear, and pain rip through him. And he understands what his mother meant. 

_It's worth it._ It's worth every moment of suffering to know that somewhere, Bucky is feeling alright. 

He misses his mother terribly for a moment, and wishes he could tell her that he loves her. 

"It's alright, Steve. I'm here. I'm with you." 

Sam reaches out to wipe the sweat from his brow with a damp washcloth. 

"More water?" 

Steve nods, and Sam leans forward to bring the straw to his mouth. 

The two of them are alone in the laboratory. Steve is wired up to the machine, once again; they have all been taking turns in the chair, sleeping in shifts, careful to channel every moment of Bucky's pain out of his body. 

This morning was particularly bad; HYDRA water boarded Bucky, and Tony, rigged up to the machine, felt the pain and terror of drowning in the open air. 

Steve, by his side alone while Sam slept and Natasha went to bring back food, had nearly panicked. Tony had choked and spluttered, clutched at the sides of the chair with white knuckles. And Steve had felt a double dose of unbearable anguish; both for the man he loved suffocating in front of him, and for the man he adored, drowning alone in some dark, sequestered pit of human cruelty. 

But by now, the waterboarding is over, and they are back to the usual blunt, ruthless, electric throb in Bucky's head, chest, and limbs. 

It is a torture designed to keep him feeling nauseous, weak, and compliant, Nat has theorized. They keep him under a steady stream of electricity for at least five hours a day, to make sure that he never feels well enough to try and escape or lash out at one of his tormentors. 

_His tormentors_. Steve can't think too much about it. 

There was a time, lifetimes ago, when other children tormented Steve. And Bucky was always there, just a few paces away, ready to jump between him and their fists, their spit, their cruelty. 

Steve can't bear to think about how much Bucky has suffered now. He can't stomach how much he has _failed_ to protect Bucky when Bucky needed him. 

How thrilled HYDRA must have been to find him in that mountain pass. A wounded man, little more than a boy, defenseless but in good health, and more than worthless to them because he was Jewish. The perfect body for their cruel experiment. 

And there was no one to rescue him, or even to look for him. Not for seventy long years, because everyone, even Steve, presumed him dead. 

In a way, it feels good, this pain. Steve is the one who deserves it. 

"Hey Steve, you still with me?" 

Sam's voice brings Steve back to reality, out of his haze of pain and nausea and regret. Sam is using his therapist voice, Steve can tell, and he is greatful for it. Sam knows what he is doing. 

Truth be told, Sam may be the only reason that Steve hasn't lost his mind yet, alone in a future with problems he never could have imagined. And Sam will keep him sane even through this, even through this torture that is _intended_ to make the victim lose his mind. 

Sam has been reading to him for several hours. Poetry, mostly, and checking in with him after each poem to see if he understood it and what he thought of it. It is an excellent distraction, forcing Steve into the analytical part of his mind and taking his attention off of pain and fear. 

"Another?" Sam asks, and Steve nods. 

Sam flips the page, and reads, "the quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed: it blesseth him that gives and him that takes. 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest. It becomes the thronéd monarch better than his crown..." 

Steve is distracted, for a moment, both from his suffering and from the poem, by the concentration on Sam's face. He looks solemn, purposeful, fully centered in his good intentions; to help Steve, to help Bucky, to defeat HYDRA. 

Steve realizes, as he has once or twice before, that he could fall in love with Sam. That he _would_ fall in love with him, and do so profoundly, if there was space in his heart for anyone but that sweet, clever, tough little boy, who had become a beautiful, kind, valiant young man before his eyes, and then fallen away from him, he had thought, forever. 

Steve and Bucky's time as lovers had been short; choked, mortified confessions and hot, desperate kisses behind locked doors. But Steve had never forgotten the feeling of Bucky's hand in his, or of Bucky's arm around him, or of Bucky's hot breath, adoring mouth on his neck. 

If Bucky has forgotten, that's alright. It doesn't matter if Bucky loves him back: all that matters is that Bucky is alright. 

Steve would endure a thousand years of torture just to make Bucky _alright_.


	4. Chapter 4

It's Sam who comes up with the idea. 

Natasha is wired up to the machine, every muscle in her body clenched with pain. Steve is sitting by her side, holding her hand, stroking it reflexively. 

Natasha doesn't have much attention to give to anything but the pain in her body, but she does notice Sam staring at her hand in Steve's. He seems to be lost in thought. 

After a few silent minutes--Natasha doesn't make a sound when she is in pain, her teeth clenched tight-- Sam speaks. 

"Tony?" 

There is a note of excitement, of purpose in his voice that makes them all look at him. 

Tony, lying fatigued and miserable on one of the cots that they have dragged into the room, sits up. 

"Yes?" 

"What if...what if you reversed the machine? Do you think you could? The Winter Soldier-- Bucky-- we could show him that we're here." 

Steve looks quickly at Tony, and Natasha can tell that the idea has struck him deeply. 

Tony twists his mouth and considers. He looks exhausted, with purple circles under his eyes and perhaps more wrinkles than he had a few days ago. But the idea has struck him too, and after a moment he gets to his feet with a renewed energy, and strides to the machine. 

It takes a little more than an hour of finagling. Tony's ingenious fingers twist at wires, and he bites his tongue between his teeth in concentration. Steve watches him with fierce hope. 

Natasha simply sits back into her pain. There's no use in either hoping or fearing; either Tony can do it, or he can't. 

Either they will be able to rescue James, or they won't. 

If they can't, it will be just another loved one lost. Just another piece of her heart gone. She has survived it, before and before and before. 

"Ah!" Tony's eyes light up with triumph, and he twists two wires together with the air of a master chef shaping the last rose on a wedding cake. 

Steve and Sam both jump to their feet, excited. 

Tony turns around to face them. "I'm...ninety-six per cent sure that'll work!" 

Steve looks at Natasha. 

"Do you feel anything different?" 

She shakes her head. 

"You won't," Tony tells her. "But he'll feel what's happening to you, and you won't feel it." 

Steve sinks to his knees in front of her. "Nat. Can I try...?" 

He reaches for her cheek, and she nods. 

His hand comes to her cheek. His thumb brushes over her cheekbone. 

It's a _caress_ , overwhelmingly tender. 

But Natasha doesn't _feel_ it, and she looks excitedly from Steve to Tony. 

"It's working! Do it again." 

Steve brushes the backs of his fingers against her cheek. 

"Bucky," he whispers reflexively. "I'm here. We're gonna get you out. Just...feel me, Buck." 

He brushes his thumb over Natasha's lips, reaches down to take her hands, and, with her permission, reaches in to press his lips to her forehead. 

Something strange happens to Natasha then. 

She feels James' heart stir. 

At first, she thinks it is her own heart. And maybe part of it is; because there is part of her that may, perhaps, enjoy being touched like this by Steve. 

But that doesn't matter. 

She reaches out to put her hand on Steve's chest. She feels his heart beat, and his rhythm matches Bucky's, although neither of them could know it. 

"Kiss me on the lips," she says, and Steve obliges. He presses his lips to hers, gently, like a prince awakening a sleeping beauty. And Bucky's heart races and splutters and aches with incomprehensible recognition, with confused love. 

"He's coming to," Natasha says, when Steve's lips leave hers. 

They look at each other with desperate hope for James, and a little bit of confused, sad tenderness for each other. 

And then Steve lets his forehead rest against hers.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: Bucky thinks about death in this chapter, and wonders whether or not he wants to die.
> 
> ((But he lives!!!))

The Soldier had felt nothing for days. 

At first, he had sought to tell his commanders. It was the better thing to do: they could not correct him if they could not punish him. 

And he always needed to be corrected. He was an imperfect machine; always breaking down, bruising, bleeding. To be imperfect was to fail HYDRA. And HYDRA was his creator and his owner. 

But when the Soldier told his commanders that he felt nothing, they had only turned up the power on the machine. He had watched them turn the dials. He knew those settings; they meant pain beyond reason. And yet, inexplicably, he still felt nothing in his body. 

He had expected it at any moment, tensed up in anticipation of it. 

But he hadn't told them that he still felt nothing. Because he was afraid that they would turn the settings up even higher. 

It was shameful. And he knew that he would be punished brutally if they discovered it. But he didn't tell them, and instead, he _acted_ as though the pain had already come back. He strained against his bindings in the chair, and growled in his throat. And his commanders were fooled. 

The pain has been gone for days now. The Soldier knows that the glitch in the system is sure to be discovered soon, and that he will pay dearly for his deception when it is. But he cannot bear to give his secret away, because the absense of pain, of nausea, is surely the most wonderful thing he has ever felt. 

The machine does nothing to him. The constant, nagging pain of hunger simply doesn't exist. He goes out on a mission one night, and feels nothing of his bruises and cuts the next day. And even when his commanders water board him, still attached to the machine, suspicious that he has withheld part of the mission report from them, the sensation of drowning never comes. 

It is the best thing that has ever happened to the Soldier. 

And at night, he starts to dream. 

He sees strange places, faces, colors; hears strange sounds that he _remembers_. He can even name some of them when he wakes up; electric radiator. Cat. Plum. 

He _liked_ feeling warm. He liked petting that orange cat. She--yes, _she_ \-- would press herself up against his hand. His _hand_. 

The Soldier shivers with discovery. He had another hand. 

He can follow the trail of any memory, and discover more, and then more, and more. From the plum, he can remember what it felt like to eat something sweet. There were other plums. And other...other _fruits_. And they grew in the sunshine. And in the open air. And once in a while, he would get to leave the city--yes! He _lived_ in the city!-- and see them, growing. 

The process of remembering brings him so much joy and excitement that he can hardly sit still in the chair. He makes a great show of suffering for his commanders. It isn't hard. He knows all too well how pain makes him move, makes him sound. But all the while, in the back of his mind, memories are tumbling back, unfolding the blueprint of a life that somehow, impossibly, but certainly, was _his_. 

It happens in the middle of a routine session on the machine, and it is the strangest thing that the Soldier has ever felt. 

His commanders are across the room, arguing with each other about some detail of his next mission, and, fortunately, not looking at him. 

If they had been looking at him, they would have realized that something was amiss. Because all at once, the Soldier feels the unmistakable touch of a _human hand_ on his cheek, and he jumps violently and grips at his arm wrests. 

The touch stirs another memory; of _ghost stories_ told around a camp fire. Of a fear of the surrounding darkness, and all of the unexplainable things it might contain. 

But this ghost caresses his cheek like a lover, and he is not afraid of it. It is _familiar_ , that touch. And he suddenly feels a waterfall, an _avalanche_ , of memories pressing at the edges of his consciousness. 

The ghost hand brushes over his lips, and his heart stirs like a sleeping bird, and beats in a faster rhythm. 

He knows this ghost. He _loved_ it. 

It kisses him. On the forehead, and on the lips. 

And then it presses its forehead to his. It feels so _real_. He can feel the blood bearing in its brow. _Do ghosts have blood?_

The Soldier had momentarily forgotten to keep up his show of pain, and he gets back to it quickly. But all the while, while he twists and moans and gnashes his teeth, he feels the ghost's hands holding his, the ghost's brow... 

There was a _boy_. A boy who said goodbye to him like this before the war. He had to stand on his tip toes to press his forehead to the Soldier's. And they were alone, in the dark, with just an oil lamp. 

They were poor, but they had each other. And the Soldier had felt rich. 

But that was more than a lifetime ago. How could the Soldier still be alive? Time didn't make any sense. 

He wanted to be with this ghost. Did that mean he wanted to die? He wasn't sure. 

He suddenly feels a tapping on his thigh. It is another ghost hand. And it is tapping him in a neat, methodical rhythm. 

After a confused moment, he realizes: _it is Morse Code._

The Soldier's heart leaps with overwhelming excitement. But his commanders are wrapping up their conversation, and soon they will turn their attention back to him. Whatever this ghost wants, they have to speak quickly. 

The Soldier counts the taps, and translates easily in his mind. 

_e are here to help you. Bite your lip if you read me._

The Soldier bites his lip, hard. 

The taps of code come again quickly. 

_My name is Natasha Romanoff. You knew me. My friends and I want to help you. HYDRA is not your friend. They only want to hurt you. Do not listen to them. Do you copy?_

The Soldier bites his lip in response. He wants desperately to tap back to her, somehow. But his hands are bound to the chair. 

_If you can escape, come to Stark Tower. If you can't, take no risks. We will communicate with you until we can locate you and stage a rescue._

The Soldier bites his lip to show thay he understands. But how can he know that he should trust these ghosts? HYDRA is his creator and his owner. But-- _no_. 

There were other things before HYDRA. If he has gotten his order of events right. There were caresses to his cheek, and words of kindness. There was...there was... 

_Steve Rogers is with me_ , the ghost of Natasha Romanoff taps. And suddenly the Soldier feels a rush of emotions so powerful that he gasps out loud. 

His commanders look over. It is not a gasp of pain, but of realization. And they are suspicious. 

The Soldier is shaking. And as his commanders approach him, he is too stunned to act out the pain that he should be feeling. 

They are going to find him out. They are going to punish him. They are going to wipe his memory again, and he will lose it all; the heat of an electric radiator in a cold New York City winter; the purr of a loving cat; the taste of a plum; and that name. That _name_ , Steve Rogers. 

Because that name is everything. That name _is_ the sky, and the wind in the trees. That name is autumn days, and the smell of his school, and the cracks in the sidewalk on the way home. 

That name is _everything_. And they will not take it from him again. 

The Soldier twists his shoulder, using the leverage of his metal bondings in the chair, and _rips his metal arm off of his shoulder._

__

In the few moments he knows he has before the pain hits, if indeed it is coming at all, he twists his body to wrench his other arm out of its bindings, unclamps the bars over his chest and waist, and launches himself at his commanders. 

__

They are no match for him, even in a group, even as blood pours from his re-mutilated shoulder. He takes them all down in moments, and wraps his wound with an unconscious man's uniform jacket. 

__

He can no longer feel the tapping of Natasha Romanoff's messages, nor the touch of Steve Rogers' hand, but that doesn't matter. He knows where to go. 

__

Whether these ghosts are dead or alive, he wants to be with them. And something tells him that they are still, impossibly, alive, as he is. He had forgotten how wonderful it could be to be alive. 

__

There was cruelty in this world, and inconceivable depths of it. But there was love too, and tenderness, and mercy. And simply feeling _alright_ was an unconscionable blessing. 

__

He has a few hours before the night guards realize that he has escaped. And the Soldier knows how to make a few hours count. He will be in America by the time they start looking for him. But his tracker was in his metal arm, and they will not be able to find him without it. At least, not before he has found a way to secure himself from them. 

__

He is already outside the base, already commandeering a helicopter, already high above the frigid evening tundra. 

__

He is on his way to Steve Rogers. And he has never been so desperately glad to be alive, and to be in the world. 

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on tumblr! https://basilique.tumblr.com/ :)))
> 
> A note on the title  
> (CONTENT WARNING: WWII Nazism, a real oral account of very graphic and disturbing antisemitic violence. You do not need to read this to understand or appreciate the fic!)
> 
> A few years ago, before my great grandmother passed away, I had a conversation with her about her life in the US during WWII. 
> 
> She told me a story about a sweetheart she had who was a soldier. He wrote her letters about what he was seeing and experiencing, and after the war he wrote to her about visiting the abandoned home of a former high-ranking Nazi. 
> 
> He told her that the house contained a lot of paraphernalia from the concentration camps, but what struck him most-- and struck my grandmother, and struck me-- was that there were lampshades in the house made of human skin. 
> 
> I was very shaken after she told me this story. It's possible that it wasn't true; she was nearly 100 years old at the time. But I believe that her memory was still good at that point, and I don't think she ever was a fanciful person. She was practical, puritanical, and clever for as long as I knew her. 
> 
> But I did not, and still do not, want to believe that such cruelty is possible in our world or any world. I don't want to believe that there are people who take pleasure and pride in torture and murder. I don't want to believe that evil really exists. 
> 
> It was important to me to talk with my great grandmother about her youth that day, because I knew that she was very near the end of her life, and I might not get a chance again. 
> 
> As I was leaving, my grandfather, her son, mentioned to her that I was interested in Shakespeare, and she got excited. As a girl, she had memorized a speech from Measure for Measure, and she still knew it by heart. She leaned out of her front door to recite it to me as I left. 
> 
> "The quality of mercy is not strained.  
> It dropeth as the gentle rain from Heaven,  
> upon the place beneath..."
> 
> I'll never forget that moment as long as I live. 
> 
> Even when it seems impossible, the idea of human goodness; tolerance and compassion and coexistence and and mercy and love, is worth believing in. 
> 
> It exists. It's all around us and inside of us. We are capable of showing tremendous love to other people. We are capable of taking away each other's pain. 
> 
> I thought that this story and these thoughts might be worth sharing here.
> 
> <3


End file.
